Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) sent messages to all members of Congress terminating their positions, stating “Your performance has not been adequate to justify further employment.” All Democratic and independent members of Congress, as well as two Republicans, found themselves locked out of their offices after everything inside had been confiscated.   read more

On May 18, 2015, President Barack Obama accepted the credentials of Fayçal Gouia, a longtime member of his country’s foreign service, to be Tunisia’s Ambassador to the United States. It’s the second time Gouia has been posted to his country’s embassy in Washington. Gouia’s first assignment to the Tunisian Embassy in Washington came in 1995, first as cultural and press counselor, followed in 1997 as economic and commercial counselor and beginning in 1999 as deputy chief of mission.   read more

Lobbyist Bruce Burkett convinced lawmakers to amend HB 1328 so it allowed “less than lethal” weapons on drones, including rubber bullets, tear gas and Tasers--many of which have caused death. The ACLU argues that "police drones are a new kind of threat to that compromise between security and liberty,” wrote Pyke. “[It] supports laws to restrict law enforcement’s use of them, and makes a compelling case that absent such restraints the technology is fundamentally at odds with the Bill of Rights.”   read more

The Pentagon’s inspector general is checking on intelligence assessments coming out of CENTCOM. Suspicions arose after a civilian DIA analyst claimed to have evidence that officials at CENTCOM “were improperly reworking the conclusions of intelligence assessments prepared for policy makers, including President Obama,” the Times reported. The story added that the possibility of “skewed intelligence” could “help explain why pronouncements about the progress of the campaign have varied widely.”   read more

Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach has gone to court in Wichita to block the release of voting machine tapes from the November 2014 election. Those same records were requested by statistician Beth Clarkson to analyze statistical aberrations she discovered in electronic voting machines. The records, Clarkson says, do not contain any personal voter data, but Republican Kobach has refused. Clarkson's research into other voting records has revealed anomalies that tended to favor Republicans.   read more

Officials “admitted to illegally disenfranchising and misleading voters” and to violations of “improperly rejecting eligible ballots and sending voters to the wrong precincts,”said ThinkProgress. They also failed to comply with voter requests for absentee ballots, provided wrong information to precincts about who was coming to vote and when, and failed to add to the rolls voters who registered in a timely manner. The names of 9,600 voters weren’t included on lists in polling places in 2012.   read more

The tax preparation firm H&R Block and Intuit, maker of TurboTax, have lobbied Congress to keep the Obama administration from simplifying the filing of taxes. In some cases, the IRS could offer automatic tax filing for some taxpayers, but H&R Block and Intuit’s lobbying are to blame for the changes not being developed and implemented. They have also convinced U.S. Senate members to needlessly expand the Earned Income Tax Credit form, an added incentive for taxpayers to seek their services.   read more

The meat was purchased from a variety of stores. The test results showed that all 458 pounds of the beef contained bacteria that indicated feces came into contact with the meat at some point. One kind of bacteria detected can cause blood or urinary tract infections. Nearly 20% of the test meat contained another bacteria that causes about 1 million cases of food poisoning each year. Only 1% contained Salmonella, which causes 1.2 million illnesses and 450 deaths in the U.S. annually.   read more

The possible victims could be Americans or non-Americans, as well as institutions, businesses, structures and locations. The directive, however, contains several examples of when U.S. intelligence agencies could skip notifying someone in the line of fire. For instance, if the notification “would unduly endanger U.S. government personnel, sources, methods, intelligence operations, or defense operations,” an agency could disregard the policy.   read more

“The reality that nearly 85% of detentions at Guantánamo stem from foreign partners with their own interests in round-ups ... rarely factors into the heated rhetoric from conservative politicians," said The Guardian. “There is great reason to disbelieve claims that detainees at Guantánamo are the ‘worst of the worst’, including the fact that many were sold to the U.S. for a bounty, not based on any real quality intelligence the U.S. had gathered,” said Laura Pitter of Human Rights Watch.   read more

Unwanted sexual contact is a common occurrence for many women—nearly 30% will experience it sometime during their lives, according to the CDC. That’s why legal experts say it is important for states to have laws on their books that address this problem. “Society can condemn this behavior through criminal law and say, ‘You pay a penalty for this.’ It may be a small penalty, but you pay a penalty,” said professor Erin Murphy.   read more

D.C. had an average of 82 hours of delay per commuter, followed by Los Angeles (80 hours), San Francisco (78 hours), New York (74 hours), and San Jose (67 hours). The study says “travel delays due to traffic congestion caused drivers to waste more than 3 billion gallons of fuel and kept travelers stuck in their cars for nearly 7 billion extra hours – 42 hours per rush-hour commuter. The total nationwide price tag: $160 billion, or $960 per commuter.”   read more

Despite government claims of safety, officials admit that one way nuclear material could be spread into the atmosphere is if a nuclear facility was hit by a fire. Now a report says that a federal nuclear agency has failed to upgrade aging fire suppression systems in its buildings. The NNSA claims it doesn’t have enough funding to replace aging water pipes intended to prevent or fight fires at nuclear weapons facilities.   read more

The Sierra Club says the Hunter power plant “is one of Utah’s worst polluters and a major source of dangerous smog-causing nitrogen oxide pollution, soot, and smog pollution.” Air quality modeling shows emissions from the plant are reportedly causing “significant exceedances of national clean air standards for dangerous sulfur dioxide pollution.” Pollution from Hunter and other sources has made the air in Utah’s several national parks barely suitable for breathing, according to the NPCA.   read more

Obama submitted “a complex draft resolution that authorizes the president to use force against the Islamic State,” said The Atlantic. Some Republicans in Congress, however, won’t touch the authorization—not because it could potentially draw the U.S. into a protracted conflict, but because it doesn’t go far enough. Obama’s request specifies that the use of U.S. ground troops is forbidden, and it puts a three-year limit on the authorization. Republicans would prefer something more open ended.   read more

Does using a government computer to access a website dedicated to helping people have extramarital affairs constitute grounds for punishment? The answer is probably not. “The rules of the game for morality in federal offices may be straightforward for pornography (it can get you fired) — but the kind of skeleton in the closet that showed up in the trove of 36 million users exposed on the cheating Web site presents officials with a murkier problem, experts say,” according to the Washington Post.   read more

Opponents of ballot selfies say they could lead to vote buying or voter intimidation. Legislators feared, for instance, that a selfie could be used as proof that a voter had cast his or her ballot a certain way to collect payment. The New Hampshire law said anyone showing photographs of their completed ballots to others or posting them online could be fined up to $1,000. The ACLU objected to the statute, claiming it violated free speech and the right of political expression.   read more